Of Cats and Doctors
by LKalomi
Summary: Due to that ever-helpful transporter, Kirk and Spock have become cats. Naturally, they can't stay out of trouble.


Title: Of Cats and Doctors  
Warnings: Minor injuries and a very ambiguously sexual fade-out  
Summary: Due to that ever-helpful transporter, Kirk and Spock have become cats. Naturally, they can't stay out of trouble.  
Author's Notes: Written anonymously several months ago to a prompt on the kink meme.

* * *

Jim realizes the moment he beams up that something is not right. He feels achy and dizzy and what's this? He's tangled in something; his own shirt, he realizes. How did that happen?

_Big, too-bright room. Huge tall creatures coming toward me._

Hey, wait a minute, where'd that thought come from? What's-

_They're trying to catch me. Flee!_

His fading human side wonders faintly why he's thinking these things, while his body is bolting for the huge door as fast as it can go.

_Get out of there, run as far as I can, lose them, quick!_

* * *

Spock realizes also that something had gone wrong. Perhaps he has caught some illness while on the planet? Hm, how odd. He appears to be caught in the familiar blue cloth of his shirt.

_Bright, unfamiliar place. Threatening creatures._

How had that thought entered his mind? An adult Vulcan does not think any thought he does not intend to. Ah, he has become some sort of animal, and its thought processes must be fighting with his own.

_The creatures are coming nearer. Run!_

No, he will not give in to this creature's mind! But out the door goes a golden blur that he knows instinctively must be Jim, and naturally it is his duty to stay with Jim no matter what.

_Just run! Get away from those creatures, lose them quickly!_

He thinks vaguely that he is not doing anything un-Vulcan, merely his duty as first officer no matter what the circumstances. And that is his last non-feline thought for some time.

* * *

"What the-" For a split second, Bones sees them in unnatural detail, his senses made temporarily hypersensitive by the shock. There are two cats poking their heads out of the two piles of clothing on the floor - one a golden-brown shorthair something like an Abyssinian, and the other jet-black and sporting caracal ears. The next instant, they are out the door in a flash, leaving their still-human companion wondering if he'd imagined the whole thing.

"K-kyle? Did you see that?"

The British lieutenant looks as bewildered as Bones, and seems likewise reassured that he had not been hallucinating. "Yeah, I think I did. What, er, happened to them?"

"No clue." A quick check reveals that the two animals are nowhere in sight in the corridor outside the transporter room, and at the speed they were going they could be anywhere now. Sighing, Bones finds the nearest comm unit and sharply enters the code for a shipwide alert. "This is Lieutenant Commander McCoy, there are two cats loose on the _Enterprise_, last seen in the vicinity of the transporter room. They are to be intercepted unharmed and brought to sickbay. McCoy out."

_Oh, what have those two gotten themselves into now?_  
After the first two or three high-speed turns from one corridor into another, Spock himself is going on instinct. These hallways are entirely too bright and there are several of the unnaturally large creatures scattered throughout, leading him to a state just short of full panic. After several more turns, they reach a deserted and slightly more dimly lit area, and permit themselves to stop and calm down.

Jim remembers, as had Spock, that they are friends, and briefly checks the other cat for injuries from the unnerving situation they had just fled. Something strikes him as odd about the sleek, black-furred body, but that part of his mind is too deeply buried to produce any more definite thoughts. Spock reciprocates, noting several rumpled spots in the other's fur but nothing else. Jim smoothes the relevant fur with a few swipes of his tongue, and then straightens up, listening intently. Both can hear the menacing creatures somewhere in the distance, but this time they do not have to scamper down the hallway.

In the side of the corridor is a small, slightly open door, oddly akin to a traditional cat-door - the opening to a Jefferies tube. As humans they would note that it should not have been left ajar like that; as cats they only see it as a way to escape, where hopefully their pursuers will not follow. Through the small gap Jim wriggles, followed by his ever-dutiful First.

On the other side, they are confronted with a tunnel much more their own size, and therefore rather reassuring. It does not occur to the humans to check the Jefferies tubes for quite some time, and in the interval, the two cats explore undisturbed.

* * *

"Sorry, Doctor, but the scanner just dinna work on that scale. Humans I can find, but cats are na' big enough to show. Ye'll have to look fer 'em manually, Doctor."

And he does precisely that. Every crewman without a reasonably vital job is conscripted into combing the ship with tricorders, and a number of them surreptitiously leave food and water out as well. As several days pass, Bones becomes more and more nervous about the two lost officers. Just how are they surviving, and what will happen when they _are_ found?

* * *

Ensign Randall of Engineering clambers into an access shaft one morning prepared for several hours at work on the circuits therein, with the requisite tools, a communicator - and his lunch. He goes to work, cheerfully whistling an off-key tune, unaware that he is being observed from a cross shaft above.

The two cats are closer to sentience than normal Terran cats, though far from human, and are quite intelligent enough to invent cooperative stealing. Having scoped out the situation, they move in smoothly, having practiced this on several other workers. Jim, who is better at this sort of thing, pokes his head into the Jefferies tube where Randall is obliviously working, holds a paw in the air pitifully, and begins to yowl, moan and generally carry on.

Randall looks up fast enough to almost give himself whiplash, instantly spots the apparently injured cat, and sets off up the ladder as fast as he can go. Jim leads him on with the killdeer act for about a minute, and when the human is sufficiently far away, Spock slips down, clamps the paper-wrapped sandwich in his mouth, and is gone like a ninja. When Jim believes he's given Spock enough time, he suddenly drops the perfectly functional paw and dashes off, leaving the poor ensign gaping almost comically.

Jim makes his way back to the warm spot over the warp engines that they have selected as a lair, and finds Spock already there. They rub heads, purring softly, and Jim goes over to the food in the middle of the room. The black cat has, as usual, divided the spoils with mathematical accuracy and neatly devoured his half, leaving his friend the better part.

_Silly cat, always looking out for me and leaving me the best. I won't eat it!_

Jim complains almost intelligibly until Spock, with a sound that would be a sigh coming from a humanoid, comes over to eat the rest.

_Illogical cat, always trying to give me the best even when I do not want it._

The meal done, and the greasy paper banished to the pile of similar refuse against the wall, they retire to the nest of softer material accumulated in the warmest part of the little nook. They cannot really mate in these bodies, even if the thought were to occur to their feline minds, but they _can_ cuddle. At least Jim can, and he subjects his rather reluctant friend to his affection at every opportunity.

They are sleek and healthy, having perfected various methods of stealing, and having learned certain spots where they can generally find food and water curiously left out in small bowls. They spend most of their days prowling the Jefferies tubes and less-frequented corridors, occasionally encountering things that spark some buried memory of having been here before. Frequently they hear humans talking, and the voices are sometimes familiar. There is one distinctive, assertive male voice, generally encountered in one part of the ship, which they both inexplicably remember kindly.

* * *

While the two cats are comfortably curled up over Scotty's engines, the owner of the afore-mentioned voice is not nearly so content. Despite several similar deceptions over the past few days, it had not occurred to Ensign Randall that the golden cat was not really injured until it had bolted, and only when it had suddenly recovered and run off had he thought to use his communicator. Consequently the hapless ensign found himself on the receiving end of an exasperated speech from Doctor McCoy.

"Don't you have a brain, boy? You knew he fakes stuff like that, couldn't you have _called_ someone before tearing off like that? We could have got one or both of them there, if it hadn't been for you!"

"I-I'm sorry, Doctor. I-I shouldn't have-"

Bones suddenly feels guilty for yelling at the ensign, who is currently wearing a most pitiful puppy-dog expression. Sure, the boy might have deserved a lecture, but what could you really expect from a redshirt, and a young one, at that? He sighs.

"Okay, I'm sure you tried. Just - try and think a little more next time, Randall."

"Ah, yessir." A very bewildered ensign scoots out of Sickbay before the doctor's mood changes yet again.

* * *

A week passes; Jim and Spock have thoroughly adapted to this new life. The occasional human thoughts become less and less frequent. Then one day, Jim, ever the enthusiastic explorer, executes a rather show-offy maneuver in the cargo bay, and falls, bringing several crates with him. Both have fallen before, and thanks to their reflexes been none the worse for wear. This time, with the crates complicating the affair, he is about to be crushed under one, when Spock comes out of nowhere and virtually throws him out of the crate's path. When Jim extracts himself from the numerous smaller items that have fallen, he does not immediately see his friend. No, there he is - partially under the cursed crate, and trying with almost Vulcan resolve not to yelp in pain from a broken hind leg.

The crate has tipped to one side, and Spock is easily dragged free of the wreckage, but the leg is another matter entirely. It isn't bleeding excessively, but it's clearly excruciatingly painful, and won't heal naturally on its own. After several minutes whining softly and attempting to comfort the injured cat, a human flash of inspiration comes to him.

_That human, the one with the funny voice that I like. He fixes humans up; why not a cat?_

With a final reassuring vocalization and a rub of their foreheads, Jim bounds off towards the place the human can always be found.

* * *

Bones is dozing over a PADD in his office when he hears a sound outside the door. It's - no, it couldn't be - yes, it's unmistakably a meow coming from outside. After all this time, it certainly can't be Jim or Spock, but what other cat would be here? He goes to investigate, and sure enough, standing there meowing and lashing its tail impatiently, is a familiar golden cat.

"What? Why've you decided to come back? You just now remembered you're supposed to be a human? And where's Spock?"

Suddenly, the pieces fall into place. The rumpled fur with several visible injuries in the hide beneath, the obvious impatience for something, and the conspicuous lack of Spock.

"Something's happened to him, right?"

No answer except further meows and a bold thump of the forehead against Bones' shin.

"Okay, show me where he is," he sighs, reaching for a tricorder and medikit. They make their way down to Cargo Hold B as fast as Bones can trot behind his eager guide, slowing only when the human must convince the cat that he is not going through that Jefferies tube over the cargo hold, and that with his security override to unlock, the door is a much quicker route. Once inside, he quickly spots the several fallen crates in back, and the black form on the ground beside them. Fast as he dashes over, reaching for his communicator as he goes, Jim gets there faster. Spock is barely conscious at this point, and a sedative hypo, administered despite a suspicious growl from Jim, takes care of that.

A two-person medical team arrives with a child-sized stretcher, informing him that a spot has been readied in Sickbay. Under Jim's wary surveillance, Spock is carefully lifted onto the stretcher and carted off. The leg is not particularly bad off, being mostly a clean break - Spock has suffered much worse in the line of duty in his normal form - but Jim of course cannot understand when they tell him that. He is inseperable from the biobed until the black cat regains consciousness, and even then only grudgingly goes off to partake of the food and water that have been provided for him.

* * *

Some time later, the cast has come off, but for lack of anything else to do, Jim and Spock are still inhabiting Sickbay. One morning, the two are curled up on their biobed when Jim awakes to an odd feeling. His arm is bent under him uncomfortably, and-

_Wait, my _arm_? But that means..._

As he opens his eyes and verifies that both are in their proper bodies, he cannot decide whether to be overjoyed or wish to vanish into Sickbay's floor. Recovering from their transformation is certainly exciting and worthy of joy, but they are both exactly as naked as they had been as cats. Moreover, their former fur coats had made a blanket unnecessary. His soft moan of realization awakens Spock, who goes through a similar thought process. The faint green flush on his face, mirroring Jim's own red-blooded blush, would have been cute under other circumstances.

"Good to, um, to see you're back as you should be, Spock."

"Likewise, Jim." He pauses. "I must thank you for your presence of mind in bringing Doctor McCoy to my aid."

"Er, no problem. You'd've done the same, I'm sure."

There is an awkward silence, broken by a soft but unmistakable chuckle from the doorway. Two heads whip around, just in time to see the room's door shutting.

"Your uniforms are in the locker," comes Bones' muffled voice through the door. "If you two want them, that is."

_finis_


End file.
